Koroit House 2025

Koroit House

Our home is a sustainable, all electrical home in South West Victoria that has been built to achieve our goals of an affordable, comfortable and sustainable home that works for us now and into the future with our young family.

The home is a solar passive design with a focus on the external envelope of the building which includes maximum insulation levels to floor, walls and ceiling, an airtight vapour permeable building wrap to walls and roof and battened cladding and roofing for ventilation of the wrap. We also utilised locally made uPVC windows and doors from Thermosmart Windows and a polished concrete floor throughout for thermal mass.

Our builder and their designer worked closely with us through the brief and concept design phases to ensure we gained the best sustainable outcome without impacting our overall budget, with a particular focus on efficiency of trades on site given the COVID restrictions during the build. Another key part of the design was an external sustainability review of the concept design by Megan Norgate (BNE) that helped reduce the homes overall footprint and improve the layout. We then worked with our energy assessor to fine tune the NATHERS modelling to right size eaves and window sizes to maximise the thermal performance.

We also focused on reducing maintenance, selecting low maintenance materials for the external façade and high traffic internal surfaces, limiting external painting and using a timber-look film on uPVC windows.

The house has achieved an 8.1 Star NATHERs rating and a net positive operational carbon footprint based on first 12 months of us having our new PV system and has only needed the additional heating from our single reverse cycle A/C a few mornings in the depth of south west Victorian winter.